Commerce launching new arts festival next weekend

After 15 years, Commerce’s City Lights Festival is no more, but locals still plan to gather to recognize the culture that makes the city special.

Commerce will hold the inaugural Folk to Fine Arts Festival this weekend to celebrate the community’s artists and lure in some out-of-town visitors.

The new three-day festival will replace the annual summertime musical showcase, the City Lights Festival, which was abandoned this year because of low turnout for the past few summers, said Denise McKay, executive director of Commerce’s Downtown Development Authority.

“We were trying to find a different kind of festival,” McKay said.

“We’re not trying to imitate anybody; we’re trying to come up with our own thing, and there are not any other (art) events at this time of year, so we thought this was good. We’re real excited about it.”

Commerce’s Folk to Fine Arts Festival will be the first in Georgia’s spring art show circuit, she said. There will be lots of folk art, along with some trained painters and sculptors, as well as art classes and workshops.

“There are a lot of artists up here, but they’re always traveling out of town to show their work,” said Mary Moses, a local artist and owner of HR Magoo’s boutique and gallery in downtown Commerce. “Commerce has never really wrapped their arms around the community and engaged the artists or the local creators or the other colorful people in the town.”

The festival, which runs Friday through Sunday at the Commerce Civic Center, will feature the work of more than 60 artists from Georgia and from across the Southeast, along with painting and pottery workshops.

The City Lights Festival was launched in 1997 to raise money to build a new performing arts center at Commerce High School. Country music legend Bill Anderson, who wrote some of his early songs while working as a radio DJ in Commerce, helped the town raise more than $500,000 by signing up big-name performers to play the festival during its 15-year run.

He came back to Commerce in September to dedicate the Bill Anderson Performing Arts Center at Commerce High School.

“City Lights was started to raise money for the performing arts center at the high school,” McKay said. “The auditorium has been built and dedicated, so we thought it was a good time to try something new.”

For information about the festival, visit the festival’s Facebook page or www.folk-finearts.com.

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